


The Story

by Harlow92



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel and Dean Meet in Hell, Castiel tells a story, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Healing Dean Winchester’s soul, M/M, castiel’s wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 09:33:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20655011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harlow92/pseuds/Harlow92
Summary: Castiel tells Dean the story of when he raised him from Hell.





	The Story

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thank you for reading.

“I was tasked with something so monumental that Father assigned a whole Garrison to me. Before, I was a soldier. Taking orders from others and staying quiet. I knew that the day would come when I would be entrusted with something very important-“

“Kinda like Rudolph?” 

“Dean, please.”

“Sorry, continue.”

“There had been whispers of the Righteous Man, all the angels presumed it was John. I knew better, for your name had been etched into my sight for all of eternity. I had been preparing for the moment you wrongfully descended into Hell since creation,”

“There are layers, different obstacles to overcome. Giant animals so vicious I prayed to Father that he replace them with Hell Hounds. Demons so crazed that their eyes were white with the stain of the unholy,”

“I lost many. Too many to count, I couldn’t mourn for their essence long, though. I had to get your soul as quickly as my wings would allow. Time isn’t an idea in Hell, one second down there is an eternity. Every moment that passed while trying to get to you was a lifetime lost to torture. The longer you were down there, the longer it would take to repair your soul,”

“When I got to you, your soul was a shell. Scarred and bruised from the lifetime of abuse you’d dealt and endured. I had to make a decision; repair you in the depths of Hell or ascend to Heaven with your soul,”

“I couldn’t fathom you making a trip to Heaven, Hell was the only feasible option. I snuck you out of the place where souls were sent to be tortured,”

“There is a small cavern in Hell that not many knew of. I took you there and warded it. I’m sure the engravings are still etched in the stone today,”

“Once I was sure we were safe, I went to work on the repairs that needed to be done. Layer by layer I peeled your soul and touched the very things that made you the Righteous Man,”

“Your mother singing to you gently as she tried soothing you to sleep. John smiling at you proudly when you took your first steps. That seemed to be the first challenge, helping you connect the childhood you once had with the life you’d actually lived. The two were so different from each other that the young child inside you was confused and hurt. The sudden change made you shut down,” 

“I traveled to your most precious memory, one where John and Mary took you to a park before going to get ice cream. That’s where you were hiding,”

“When I found you there, you were the same age you would have been when the fire happened. I saw you following the apparition of your memories with an amazed smile on your face,”

“I told you I was an Angel of the Lord and you giggled. ‘Angels don’t leave Heaven, Cas.’ Those were the first words you ever spoke to me. We spent months, maybe years, in the time of that memory. At first, we would walk side by side watching the slide show quietly. There were times you would cry at the sight of your younger self being loved. I would try to comfort you, but you would always shut me out, even when you were a child,”

“I’d never been around a child before, the only reference I had were simple observations. Even though I’d prepared for millennia to restore you, I certainly wasn’t ready to actually get you to trust me.”

“What kind of trickery did you play on innocent me?”

“Something simple, I’d had it with me the whole time and yet I never thought to use it until you asked me to see it.”

“Whoa Cas.”

“Dean, you asked me to tell you the story now let me tell you.”

“.... Fine.”

“As I was saying, one day you asked if you could see my wings. At first I said no, but then you began your incessant whining and I just couldn’t stand to listen. So I showed them to you, and for the first time since I’d arrived in the memory, you were mesmerized by something other than your parents,”

“We’d spend days after that talking about why things turned out the way they did. You were so hurt and all I could do was offer comfort. I told you that you were always meant for more than living a normal life, for it had been written in gospel and sung by the angels,”

“Once you had accepted your fate, you simply vanished. All that was left was darkness. That’s when I knew it was time to move on to your next layer,”

“I found you watching as John fought with you over teaching Sam how to use a gun. You were so angry as you witnessed the memory that you looked at me and ran. This time you were merely a teenager, but unlike the time before, you knew who I was. There was no trust to be earned, I already had it,”

“You vented to me for a very long time about how John had raised you. I listened to stories of you learning about the monsters under your bed and how to kill them so no other child would have to worry. Mostly, though, you were so angry for Sam,”

“You thought you would be able to shield him from a hunter’s life, but you hadn’t considered that in order to do that you would need to shield him from you father. He was the monster that walked right beside you and you couldn’t do anything about it,”

“You asked if I could show you my wings again. When I showed them to you, you marveled at the width. In the first layer, you were simply amazed that I had them. In this layer, you would stand in front of me with your arms spread out to your side, measuring how much longer my wingspan was compared to your arm length,”

“It didn’t take long for us to move past this layer. You simply disappeared in the middle of our conversation followed closely by the memory of the fight,”

“When I moved on to the next layer, you were much older and quite cheeky. You greeted me with a smirk and told me to watch quietly. Sam was graduating,” 

“I’d never seen you look so proud amongst your memories. You kept repeating to me what your apparition was telling Sam, ‘I’m so proud,’”

“I suppose that’s when your beauty really struck me. I thought myself immune to the charm I’d known you were able to use on others. But even in the middle of Hell with an angel sorting through your memories, you had a way to make me blush,”

“Again, you asked to see my wings. You spent hours stroking them gently. We talked about flying, and what it feels like to be so free. You told me you wished you could fly away, forget everything and live a normal life,”

“You understood, though, that you simply weren’t meant to live that way. That you had a bigger purpose and, for the sake of others, you had to live up to it,”

“When you vanished, I felt a deep remorse. For I knew what was coming and I didn’t want to lose the little bit of comfort we’d formed,”

“I knew, though, that we had to make it through the last layer. After that, we would have very little work left before resurfacing from Hell. I stayed in the dark for many millennia, avoiding what was coming,”

“My Father spoke to me in those moments. He told me that you had a purpose to serve and I was the only one who could help you achieve that. No matter what I met on the last layer, I was strong enough to withstand it for both of us,”

“Eventually I made it to the final layer. When I met you there, you asked me what took me so long before walking turning towards your memory,”

“It was of the souls you tortured. We watched every single one of them in silence. There were times when you would simply lean your shoulder into mine and cried silently,”

“I watched as your face contorted with the pain of the memory. Tears slipping down your face as you finally understood the meaning of what you did,”

“I assured you that it had always been a part of the plan. It was never supposed to be John, for he wasn’t supposed to go to Hell in the first place. It was like talking to a brick wall,”

“Finally, I did the only thing I could think of. I shielded you from the memory. The moment I wrapped you in my wings the noise disappeared. You whispered ‘thank you,’”

“That small piece of protection was what finally had you moving on from the memory. I mourned the loss of you when everything faded, but there was still much to be done,”

“When I resurfaced from your memories, you were laying on the rocky ground of the cavern. Your eyes were barely open, but when you saw me, you smiled,”

“I began healing your body while working on healing my own. An angels Grace is unlike any other energy source out there. In order to fully restore oneself, we would have to make contact with a soul for long period of time,”

“You weren’t quite ready for that, but you wanted to help me, so we’d work in small increments of time. I would touch your soul and then heal you. We did this for a few eternities before either of us were truly ready for the trip home,” 

“Right before we took flight, you asked to see my wings one last time. I had already warned you that you’d likely not remember our time together. You said you wanted to see them with your own eyes before the part of you that remembered would be forgotten forever,”

“I showed them to you before grabbing you and pulling you from the depths of Hell without warning. I knew you wouldn’t have gone any other way,”

“I’d hoped that you would remember. A small part of me believed that if our bond was strong enough, the memories would last,”

“It was a fool’s wish,”

“The first time we met after you resurfaced, I... realized that we would have to start all over again. You were much more trusting in Hell.” 

Dean sat on the grass with Castiel’s head cradled in his lap. He absentmindedly ran his fingers through the angel’s hair as Cas recounted the story of a life they’d lived together that Dean couldn’t recall. 

Cas lay on the ground staring up at Dean, never breaking eye contact throughout the tale. There was pain etched deeply into the lines of the angel’s face. 

“There’s more, isn’t there?” Dean asked. He couldn’t shake the feeling that his angel was holding something back and he wanted to know everything. 

“Dean, I don’t believe you’ll want to know the rest.” Castiel said and buried his face in Dean’s stomach. 

Dean gripped his angel’s hair and pulled gently, forcing Cas out of hiding.

“I want to know everything.” Dean said earnestly. Castiel closed his eyes before nodding and taking a deep breath.

“The bond we shared was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I once told Sam you and I had a profound bond, I wasn’t lying. In Hell, everything is amplified, every sin you’d ever craved is magnified by ten. Angels aren’t immune to that,”

“When I began healing your body, we had already experienced so much together, and I had been watching over you since the Dawn of Man. It was... very easy for me to bend to your wants, for they were shared between us,” 

“We craved each other’s touch. I tried, Dean, I really tried to keep my wants locked away. You were just so unlike anything I’d ever experienced before,”

“A man who’d spent his whole life saving others, and yet, you still felt like you didn’t deserve rescuing yourself. So selfless that even Noah himself would have wept,” 

“When an angel looks at someone we see them differently than what you would. We see their souls. You had the brightest one I’d ever seen. I found myself lost, drawn to you in a way I couldn’t control,”

“I had no will left to fight, so I took what I wanted. Those lifetimes spent with you were... beautiful. I’d never known a love so powerful,”

“You begged me to stay, keep you in pits of Hell and live out our eternities in damnation. I wanted to, Father knows I wanted nothing more. But there was something bigger than us waiting. You asked that I at least leave you something, a mark as a reminder of the time we spent together.” 

Dean rubbed his hand over where Cas’s hand print had once been. Though it was long gone, he could still feel it as though it were there. 

“The hand print?” Dean whispered. Castiel nodded his head, his hair sliding on Dean’s jeans.

“Yes. I shouldn’t have done it. I told you I wouldn’t, but at the last moment as we were ascending from Hell, you told me you loved me. Selfishly, I left it there, as a reminder of what we had shared. It was more for myself, I knew that if it weren’t there I would convince myself that it was all a dream.” Castiel answered morosely. 

“Cas, why didn’t you tell me?” Dean asked, even though he knew the answer.

“Would you have believed me if I did?” Castiel asked with a grave voice. 

“No.” Dean whispered back. His darkest kept secret had always been that he liked men. John would have killed him if he knew the truth. If Castiel had told him this story when he first came back from Hell, he would have denied it vehemently and ran from the angel. 

“When I came to you at the gas station, I realized that not only did you not remember me, but that you couldn’t even understand me. So I went to Jimmy, I thought maybe if you could just hear me that you would remember. Instead you shot me.” Castiel whispered with tears rolling down his cheeks. 

“Obviously I knew it wouldn’t damage me physically, but I felt shattered. Defeated and broken. I decided it was time to be a good soldier again the moment the bullet pierced my body.” 

“Oh Cas,” Dean whispered as he leaned over his angel and kissed him gently. “I’m so sorry.” 

And that was all Dean could truly say. He looked back and realized the yearning he’d always felt for Castiel came from something deeper than just the fascination of having an angel in his pocket. More than having a deep attraction for an otherworldly creature in a damn fine meat suit. It was always love. 

“How could I ever be mad, Dean? Look at where we are now.” Castiel said. Dean looked around and saw the green grass, wild flowers poking up through the soil. They were in the meadow where he’d died. 

At first Dean thought it odd that this would be his version of Heaven. Eventually, though he realized it was truly the only place he’d felt at peace. He had finally accepted his fate as Sam wept over his body and Castiel promised that he’d be joining him soon. 

When Dean woke up in the meadow, Castiel was waiting to explain everything to him. The angel hadn’t left his side since. 

“I’m happy here, Cas.” Dean said as Castiel sat up and looked into Dean’s eyes.

“I know, Dean.” Dean shook his head.

“No, I mean I’m happy here, with you.” Castiel smiled at Dean’s whispered confession.

“I know.” Castiel said back before pulling Dean in for a deep kiss. When they finally separated, Castiel lay down on his back and pulled Dean into him. 

“I love you, Dean Winchester. From the moment I found you in Hell, I’ve loved you.” Castiel said. Dean peeked up from his spot on Castiel’s chest. 

“I love you too,” Dean said before laying back down. “Enough with the chick flick moments.” He grunted and smiled as he felt Castiel’s chest move with laughter. 

“Anything for you Dean.”


End file.
